“I am because we are”
“Respeito. Vida. Amor. Lutas.” (Respect. Life. Love. Struggles.) Memorial for Marielle Franco and Anderson Gomes on Rua Joaquim Palhares, Estácio, Rio de Janeiro. Photo by Témoris Grecko
In Brazil, Marielle Franco’s memory inspires the Black, feminist, LGBTQ+ cause against the extreme right
Editor’s note: For a version of this story in Spanish click here.
Francia Márquez invited Anielle Franco to join her on stage at Auditorio Mayor in the Colombian capital of Bogotá. It was March 5, 2022, and Márquez was still a promising presidential candidate, but not yet victorious. However, her followers, like Anielle, felt she was already Colombia’s first female and Black president. Anielle had come all the way from Rio de Janeiro, in neighboring Brazil, to witness her campaign’s closing rally ahead of the primary election that would determine the presidential candidate from Colombia’s leftist coalition, Pacto Histórico. Weeks later, Márquez instead became front-runner, Gustavo Petro’s, running mate. And on June 19, she was elected vice president.
Francia waved a yellow scarf that read “Justiça por Marielle” in Portuguese and displayed the face of a Black woman in high-contrast. The Afro-Colombian politician was one of those demanding justice for Anielle’s sister, Marielle Franco, who had been murdered in Rio four years earlier, on March 14, 2018. Anielle saw similarities between the two women: like Márquez, Marielle Franco was a Black, single mother who had dared to venture into white, male-dominated politics, under a far-right government with misogynistic, racist, violent tendencies, openly inspired by Donald Trump’s tactics.
“It brings hope to see a campaign led by a Black woman with a strong, outstanding history, showing that the people could also have several Francias in every country in Latin America,” Anielle told the press when she returned to Rio.
If only her sister could have been one of those Francias.
STIGMAS FOR THE STRUGGLE
“I am because we are” (eu sou porque nós somos): This was Marielle’s leitmotif and it appears on her memorial wall, located a few feet away on Joaquim Palhares Avenue in downtown Rio, where the city council member was killed. The day she was murdered, she was on her way home after meeting with local women. At about 11 p.m., the assassins pulled up next to Marielle’s car and fired thirteen shots. She took a bullet to the neck and three to the head. Her driver, Anderson Gomes, was shot three times. An aid sitting with Marielle in the back seat was wounded by shrapnel.
Mural honoring Marielle Franco reads: “I am because we are.” Photo by Témoris Grecko
On another part of the memorial wall, Marielle’s and Anderson’s faces ask, “Who ordered our killings?”
Marielle used to introduce herself with these words: “I am female, a Black, a lesbian, a mother, a favelada (people who live or were born in a favela, a shanty town).” Marielle had turned these social stigmas into the pillars of her political activism.
Marielle, who was 38 at the time of her death, was always smiling. She was a cheerful person, the one that never forgot a colleague’s birthday, the one who convinced everyone in the office to arrive early to have breakfast together. Sydney Teles, a Black social educator who worked with Marielle in Rio de Janeiro Assembly’s Human Rights Commission, remembers the time when they both were traveling by train. Marielle was wearing a campaign sticker on her chest. A little girl noticed the resemblance between Marielle and the face on the campaign sticker. “Yes that’s me, my dear, that’s me,” Marielle said, allowing the child to take the sticker and joyfully put it on her own clothes.
“Many people see Marielle as a myth today, but she was a human being, so fragile and so strong that we chose her to represent us as our candidate to Rio’s city council,” says Sydney Telles, social educator. Photo by Témoris Grecko
Systemic Impunity
Marielle’s romantic partner for years, 36-year-old architect Mônica Benício, was elected in 2020 to fill Marielle’s seat in the City Council. “She was a socialist, a feminist, a woman whose body held many life stories, so many faults,” Benício says, describing her lost love, with whom she lived since 2016. “Her murder conveys the message that this body is the body of those faults Brazil deems disposable, a body that is not allowed to dispute spaces of power. Brazil has respect for a few things, one of those are spaces of power, but not even a congressional post can protect that body Brazil despises.”
Marielle’s most noteworthy line of work was denouncing the violence of milícias, right-wing paramilitary groups formed by current or former police officers, who claim they are fighting drug-trafficking gangs only to take over their business. They impose their bloody rule over the favelados with racketeering, kidnappings, torture, and killings. Nevertheless, politicians, police officers, some press, prosecutors, and even judges pretend to believe the milícias’ goals are fair to justify leniency and blatant complicity.
Mônica Benício leads a rally at Cinelandia Square to symbolically restore a street sign in honor of Marielle that had been removed by Bolsonaro supporters. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Oct. 14, 2018. Photo via Shutterstock
This keeps Marielle’s case stuck. Journalists found many wrongdoings in the official investigation, including dismissed witnesses, mishandled evidence, and attempts to close the case. Eventually, two former police officers, Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Queiroz, were jailed and put on trial for the crime. They were each condemned to five years of prison for lesser crimes: possession of weapons and arms trafficking.
Then it was revealed that Lessa lived in the same luxurious residential compound in Rio as Jair Bolsonaro (who remains president of Brazil until January 1, 2023). Furthermore, in November 2019, TV network O’Globo aired the testimony of a doorman who stated that on the day of the crime, Queiroz arrived by car and said he was going to house 58 (Bolsonaro’s). A man who identified himself as “Jair” authorized his entry, but Queiroz went to Lessa’s home instead.
The president, who was in Saudi Arabia when this testimony became public, rushed to do damage control: “(The) voice isn’t mine.” He was sure because he kept the security recordings, which were supposed to remain in police custody, claiming someone could try to alter them.
Later, the prosecution dismissed the witness, alleging he was not the person who actually talked to Queiroz.
DEFEATING BOLSONARO
During his reelection bid, Bolsonaro debated his rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on October 16. “The candidate knows that he who is linked to milícias and organized crime isn’t me,” Lula said. “And he even knows the culpability of organized crime in Marielle’s murder in Rio de Janeiro.”
Marielle’s friends felt vindicated. And this was coming from Lula, who they had stopped supporting 17 years ago. Marielle was part of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), whose members broke away from Lula’s Workers’ Party in 2005, angered by his pensions reform. But after four years of Bolsonaro — whose far-right policies, rhetoric, and methods have spread hate, destroyed large parts of the Amazonian forest, and worsened the pandemic’s death toll with his negationism (discrediting of science related to COVID-19) —, the former dissidents were deeply committed to helping Lula get elected.
“We’re not naïve. We don´t think Lula will govern more to the left than he previously did. Today, exceptionally, we walk side by side with Lula to defeat Bolsonaro,” said deputy Dani Monteiro, who became the youngest member of Rio de Janeiro’s State Assembly in 2018, at the age of 27. She and three other Black women, two in the same chamber and another in the Federal Congress, initially rode a wave of indignation and solidarity for Marielle’s murder to victory.
“Bolsonaro’s Brazil reminds of a Brazil we didn’t defeat yet, that of the military dictatorship (1964-85),” said State deputy Dani Monteiro. “Just look at the power the armed forces still hold in our Constitution. The dictatorship ended because it was a horror but we didn’t break it. Photo via Dani Monteiro’s archive
Black Woman President
After a first electoral round, when he fell two points short of winning with more than 50% of the vote, Lula’s wide alliance from left to moderate right succeeded in October 30th’s second-round, but by a short margin of 1.8% over the incumbent. Bolsonaro was forced to withdraw his threat of using the military and police force to retain power, but his allies won a large swath of seats in Congress and governorships.
Still, Marielle’s PSOL scored some important victories. Two out of three new congresspeople, who will become Brazil’s first transgender deputies, are PSOL members. The same goes for the two first female indigenous federal legislators from the states of Sâo Paulo and Minas Gerais. In the nation’s capital, Brasilia, one of their gay comrades received the highest number of votes in city’s history. And “Bancada Feminista” (Feminist Seats), a “collective candidacy” for a Sâo Paulo Assembly seat — under the motto “With one vote, choose five Black feminists” — was elected with 259,000 votes.
“Political brutality, political violence, has strengthened the resistance of the feminist, Black, indigenous, LGBT movements. It says a lot about the force we have, our determination to put this country back on the democratic process,” said council member Benício, adding that it is one thing to have Bolsonaro defeated, and another to defeat Bolsonarism.
But the memory of Marielle strengthens them, adds her amor: “She represents that place of hope, of political renovation, but above all, that place of resilience. Marielle is a much larger figure than Bolsonaro. She gives us a lot of hope that more Marielles can blossom and fewer Bolsonaros can exist in our society.”
Marielle’s political companions strive to make sure someone will follow in Marielle’s footsteps. As her sister Anielle wrote in a piece after Colombia’s Márquez’s victory: “As I looked Francia in the eye, took her hand and shouted with her, and as I felt the energy of those people who were hopeful for change, I thought how beautiful it would be to elect a Black woman president or vice president in Brazil.”
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Témoris Grecko is an award-winning Mexican journalist, documentary maker and political analyst who has covered armed conflicts around the world and has published seven non-fiction books, including “Killing The Story” in the U.S.
Eileen Truax is a Mexican journalist with more than 25 years of experience. Her work has been published in the United States, Latin America, and Spain, such as The Washington Post, Vice, El Universal, El Faro, Gatopardo, and 5W, among others. She has published three books with editions in English and Spanish: “Dreamers, an immigrant generation’s fight for their American Dream ;” “How does it feel to be unwanted. Stories of resistance and resilience from Mexicans in the US;” and “We built the wall. How the US keeps out asylum seekers from Mexico, Central America and beyond.”
She is currently a professor in the Masters of Literary Journalism program at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), where she is also working on her doctorate in the Media, Communication, and Culture program.